Dolly, First Cloned Sheep What effect has the successful cloning of Dolly had on the general population?. About Dolly Dolly, a Finn Dorset sheep, was born on July 5th, 1996, at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her birth, not revealed to the public until February 3rd, 1997, sparked controversy instantly, because Dolly was the world's first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Considered one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs ever, Dolly's birth and subsequent survival proved that adult cells can reprogram themselves into a new being. The team that created her, led by Scotsman Ian Wilmut, hoped to create an animal whose cells were genetically young again, rather than prematurely adult; however, when Dolly was reported to have been euthanased on February 14th, 2003, nearly six years after her birth, concern was raised that her progressive lung disease was caused because her cells were already old; she also had premature arthritis. Sheep can normally live to 11 or 12 years of age, and lung disease is not common in younger sheep.

There was some speculation as to whether she caught it or not from the other sheep that she was housed with, but that claim has been neither confirmed nor denied. Dolly, named after singer Dolly Parton, bred normally on two occasions, with a Welsh mountain ram named David, and over the course of her life gave birth to four lambs; proving thus that clones can reproduce. Francis Crick and James Watson are widely recognized as some of the first pioneers in cloning technology. Their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, and later, their work on moecular heredity, helped to propel the science of biotechnology into the public view. This in turn led to an increase in scientific research that focused on learning the intricacies of the human genetic code and, subsequently, the discovery that cloning is possible and within reach of scientists today. Cloning as it exists today would probably not exist but for the research of these two men, who in 1962 received a Nobel prize for their work. Another important name in cloning history is John Gurdon, who in 1962 announced that he had used the nucleus of fully differentiated adult intestinal cells to clone South African frogs.

Gurdon’s experiment was widely talked about, although it was never proven that the frogs were true clones. In 1984, Steen Willadsun cloned a sheep from embryo cells, which were the predecessor to Dolly’s method of cloning. His work was the first verified incidence of cloning using nuclear transfer, which was remarkable at the time considering that only a few months earlier it had been said that it was biologically impossible. The major debate over Dolly was the issue of subsequent human cloning. The ethics that need to be considered over this issue are enormous, and there is no one right answer. Since Dolly, human cloning advocates have lobbied to legalize cloning; but so far this has not happened. Some people are of the opinion that cloning is essentially "playing God" and is abominable to say the least; they cite cloning experiments that have gone awry, with such results as deformed fetuses with oversized organs, and birthed animals that were twice the normal size and died soon after. Overall, the Dolly debate still continues internationally, and has never really died away. Whatever the future of cloning may be, Dolly existed, and that in itself is a momentous event in human history.

Dolly, the First Cloned Mammal, Is Dead - The New York Times The New York Times |Dolly, the First Cloned Mammal, Is Dead Search Dolly, who as the first mammal to be created by cloning became the most famous sheep in history, is dead at age 6. She died today after a brief illness, a lung infection. This afternoon, veterinarians who had been treating her decided that the infection was progressing and she was suffering. They concluded that it would be more merciful to put her to death than to continue to treat her, Dr. Ian Wilmut, a scientist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh who led the team that created Dolly, said in an interview. Dr. Wilmut said that there would be an autopsy on Dolly, but there are no immediate plans to clone the sheep. He said that Dolly would be put on display at the National Museum of Scotland. It is, said Dr. Wilmut, a sad time for scientists at the Roslin Institute, who had been present at the creation, when Dolly, the clone, began her life in a petri dish, and saw her every day in the stall where she lived.

It is possible for sheep to live for 11 or 12 years, Dr. Wilmut said, so many of his colleagues had hoped that Dolly would have lived longer. "The fact the she isn't there any more will be brought home to us when we go near that barn and she's not there," Dr. Wilmut said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But her death, Dr. Wilmut said, probably had nothing to do with the fact that she was a clone. Dr. Wilmut said that lung infections are common among sheep that live in stalls, as Dolly had. It could equally well have happened if she was not a clone, Dr. Wilmut said. Dolly lived her entire life at the Roslin Institute where she was born on July 5, 1996, at 5 p.m., weighing 14.5 pounds. In attendance were a local veterinarian and a few staff members from the Roslin Institute. But no one took photographs, and Dr. Wilmut said he did not even remember where he was when he got a phone call from his colleagues saying Dolly had been born. Because of a patent application, her birth was kept secret for months. Then, on Feb.

27, 1997, a paper appeared in the British journal Nature, called Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells, and Dolly became a celebrity. She was the first clone, created from frozen and stored udder cells of a sheep that had died years before. As a clone, she was the identical copy of this long-dead animal. Before Dolly, many scientists had thought that cloning was biologically impossible. Dolly, of course, proved them wrong, and ushered in an era in which cloning has come to be seen as both a cure and a curse. Many scientists, including Dr. Wilmut, would like to use it to develop replacement cells for ailing humans. They would start the cloning process, then take the ball of cells after just a few days, while they were still embryos, researchers to clone embryonic stem cells, which could grow not into another person but into tissues and organs that would match an individuals. Others worry about the ethics of cloning humans, and say that cloning has turned out to be much riskier for animals than anyone had predicted. Dolly is survived by six offspring, all by natural birth. "She's been a friendly face of science," Dr.

Wilmut said. "She was a very friendly animal that was part of a big scientific breakthrough." First successful cloning of a mammal - Jul 05, 1996 - HISTORY.com First successful cloning of a mammal Share this: First successful cloning of a mammal Author First successful cloning of a mammal URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1996, Dolly the sheep–the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell–is born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. Originally code-named “6LL3,” the cloned lamb was named after the buxom singer and actress Dolly Parton. The name was reportedly suggested by one of the stockmen who assisted with her birth, after he learned that the animal was cloned from a mammary cell. The cells had been taken from the udder of a six-year-old ewe and cultured in a lab using microscopic needles, in a method first used in human fertility treatments in the 1970s. After producing a number of normal eggs, scientists implanted them into surrogate ewes; 148 days later one of them gave birth to Dolly.

Dolly’s birth was announced publicly in February 1997 to a storm of controversy. On one hand, supporters argued that cloning technology can lead to crucial advances in medicine, citing the production of genetically modified animals to be organ donors for humans as well as “therapeutic” cloning, or the process of cloning embryos in order to collect stem cells for use in the development of treatments for degenerative nerve diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Some scientists also looked at animal cloning as a possible way to preserve endangered species. On the other hand, detractors saw the new cloning technology as potentially unsafe and unethical, especially when it was applied to what many saw as the logical next step: human cloning. Over the course of her short life, Dolly was mated to a male sheep named David and eventually gave birth to four lambs. In January 2002 she was found to have arthritis in her hind legs, a diagnosis that raised questions about genetic abnormalities that may have been caused in the cloning process. After suffering from a progressive lung disease, Dolly was put down on February 14, 2003, at the age of six. Her early death raised more questions about the safety of cloning, both animal and human.

Though Ian Wilmut, the lead scientist on the team that produced Dolly, has spoken out publicly against human cloning, its supporters are unlikely to be dissuaded. As for Dolly, the historic sheep was stuffed and is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Related Videos Dolly the sheep Dolly the sheep 5 min read Share As the first cloned mammal ever to be created from an adult cell, her birth was of huge excitement both to the scientific world and to the public. Dolly the sheep fact file Born Gifted by the Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh Museum reference Dolly is on display again in our new science and technology galleries . Did you know? Dolly was named after the legendary country and western singer Dolly Parton. Why clone a sheep? The development of cloning technology was an extension of the Roslin Institute's interest in the application of transgenic technology to farm animals. Transgenesis is the process of introducing an external gene, called a transgene, into a living organism so that the organism will display a new trait, which it may then pass on to its offspring.

Transgenesis has been practised on mice since the early 1980s, producing so-called 'super mice' through a very sophisticated genetic modification technology using embryonic stem cells. Since embryonic stem cells had not been isolated from farm animals, this method of genetic modification was not available. Cloning was therefore a potential alternative way of achieving the same end. Hello Dolly As with all other cloned animals, Dolly started her life in a test tube. Once normal development was confirmed at six days, the embryo, which was eventually to become Dolly, was transferred into a surrogate mother. The pregnancy went without a problem and Dolly was born on 5 July 1996. The birth of Dolly was kept under wraps until the publication of the Roslin Institute's research results could be prepared. Once these results were released, the full impact of the discovery became plain, as the world’s press descended on Roslin. Dolly's family In an attempt to allow Dolly to have as normal a life as possible, it was decided that she should be allowed to breed. A small Welsh mountain ram was selected as her mate and between them they successfully produced six lambs.

Their first lamb, Bonny, was born in the spring of 1998. Twins followed the next year and triplets the year after that. Dolly as a lamb with her surrogate mother. © Roslin Institute. Dolly and her first lamb Bonnie. © Roslin Institute. Dolly the sheep being scanned. © Roslin Institute. Dolly's arthritis In the autumn of 2001, Dolly was seen to be walking stiffly. X-rays confirmed that Dolly did indeed have arthritis. It fueled the suspicion that cloned animals were destined to age prematurely. The cause of the arthritis was never established but daily anti-inflammatory treatment resolved the clinical signs within a few months. Dolly's final illness Although the arthritis was a concern for the animal carers at Roslin, a much more serious problem was feared. In January 2000, another cloned sheep, Cedric, died. The post mortem revealed that Cedric had died of sheep pulmonary adenomatosis (SPA). This disease is caused by a virus that induces tumours to grow in the lungs of affected animals and is incurable.

Dolly remained healthy until Monday 10 February 2003, when an animal care worker reported that he had noted her coughing. Full veterinary examinations and blood tests were conducted but failed to establish a diagnosis. A CT scan was carried out on 14 February 2003. The scan confirmed the team's worst fears: tumours were growing in Dolly's chest. Since a general anaesthetic had been necessary to perform the CT scan it was decided that it would be best if Dolly did not regain consciousness and she was put to sleep. Why is Dolly important? Dolly was important because she captured the public imagination. The idea that there might be an exact copy of oneself somewhere in the world is a theme that has been often pursued in science fiction and the prospect that it might be possible to clone a human being has excited a lot of speculation and interest. Likewise, plans to clone extinct species such as mammoths have attracted a lot of publicity, but at present such ideas must remain, like Jurassic Park, firmly in the realm of fiction.

Dolly on film This short animation about Dolly was made by young volunteers at National Museum of Scotland working with curators from our Science and Technology department and animator Cameron Duguid. Dolly takes on the Atom Smasher Dolly and the Atom Smasher was designed and made as part of a National Museums Scotland project, Game Jam, which brought together schools pupils, game developers and museum objects. Pupils from Craigie High School in Dundee worked with Dundee Games Collective (DGC) and staff from the museum’s Community Engagement team. The Cloning Experiment Dolly the Sheep - Cloning Genetic Engineering Portions of this page is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dolly (sheep)" . Home > Cloning > The Cloning Experiment Dolly the Sheep Dolly The Sheep Dolly the Sheep The ewe Dolly (July 5, 1996 – February 14, 2003) was the first animal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. She was cloned by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Born on July 5, 1996, she lived until the age of six. The cell used as the donor for the cloning of Dolly was taken from a mammary gland, and the production of a healthy clone therefore proved that a cell taken from a specific body part could recreate a whole individual. More specifically, the production of Dolly showed that mature differentiated somatic cells in an adult animal's body could under some circumstances revert back to an undifferentiated pluripotent form and then develop into any part of an animal. As Dolly was cloned from part of a mammary gland, she was named after the famously busty country western singer Dolly Parton. Birth Dolly was the end result of a long research program funded by the British government at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. This used the technique of somatic cell nuclear transfer, where the cell nucleus from an adult cell is transferred into an unfertilized oocyte that has had its nucleus removed. The hybrid cell is then stimulated to divide by an electric shock, and the blastocyst that is eventually produced is implanted in a surrogate mother.

In the previous year, the same team had produced cloned sheep from embryonic cells, but this was not seen as a breakthrough since adult cloned animals had been produced from embryonic tissue as long ago as 1958, using cells from the frog Xenopus laevis. Dolly was the first clone produced from a cell taken from an adult animal. However, this cloning process is still highly inefficient, with Dolly the only lamb that survived to adulthood from 277 attempts. She is also recognised as one of the major stepping stones in the development of modern biology. Cloning Process of Dolly the Sheep Life Dolly lived for her entire life at the Roslin Institute. There she was bred with a Welsh Mountain ram and produced six lambs in total. Her first lamb called Bonnie, was born in the spring of 1998. The next year Dolly produced twin lambs, and she gave birth to triplets in the year after that. In the autumn of 2001, at the age of five, Dolly developed arthritis and began to walk stiffly, but this was successfully treated with anti-inflammatory drugs.

Death On February 14, 2003, Dolly was euthanised because of a progressive lung disease. A Finn Dorset such as Dolly has a life expectancy of around 12 to 15 years, but Dolly lived to be only six years of age. An autopsy showed she had a form of lung cancer called Jaagsiekte that is a fairly common disease of sheep and is caused by the retrovirus JSRV. Roslin scientists stated that they did not think there was a connection with Dolly's being a clone, and that other sheep in the same flock had died of the same disease.Such lung diseases are a particular danger for sheep kept indoors, and Dolly had to sleep inside for security reasons. However, some believe a contributing factor to Dolly's death was that she could have been born with a genetic age of six years, the same age as the sheep from which she was cloned. One basis for this idea was the finding that Dolly's telomeres were short, which typically is a result of the aging process. However, the Roslin Institute have stated that intensive health screening did not reveal any abnormalities in Dolly that could have come from advanced aging.

Legacy After cloning was successfully demonstrated through the production of Dolly, many other large mammals have been cloned, including horses and bulls. Cloning is now considered a promising tool for preserving endangered species and may be important in the future production of transgenic livestock. Most animal conservation professionals point out that cloning does not alleviate the problems of loss of genetic diversity (see inbreeding) and habitat, and so must be considered an experimental technology for the time being, and all in all would only rarely be worth the cost, which on a per-individual basis far exceeds conventional techniques such as captive breeding or embryo transfer. The attempt to clone argali sheep did not produce viable embryos. The attempt to clone a banteng bull was more successful, as were the attempts to clone mouflon, both resulting in viable offspring. The banteng example is a case illustrating the circumstances under which the uncertainties of cloning attempts are outweighed by the benefits. The cloned dog Snuppy was unfortunately associated with the Korean stem cell scandal involving Hwang Woo-Suk. Portions © 2002-2010 Bootstrike.Com.

G.Ganesh, Dennis, Nathaniel, Cai Peng - Bootstrike.Com Dolly was world's hello to cloning's possibilities - USATODAY.com Online degrees CLONING MILESTONES 1938: German embryologist Hans Spemann proposes an experiment to remove the nucleus from an unfertilized egg and replace it with the nucleus from a specialized cell such as skin or liver, a cloning technique proven years later. 1984: Danish embryologist Steen Willadsen clones a lamb from a developing sheep embryo cell. His experiment is repeated by other scientists who clone a variety of animals. 1996: Ian Wilmut and his team at the Roslin Institute in Scotland clone the world's first sheep from adult cells, using the mammary cells of a ewe. The lamb born on July 5 is named Dolly after curvaceous country singer Dolly Parton. 1998: Human embryonic stem cells are isolated and cultured by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. 2001: Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts announce they have cloned human embryos for the first time, but the embryos die after a few cell divisions.

2001: President Bush limits federally funded research on human embryonic stem cells to lines, or colonies, of cells that have already been created. 2002: California becomes the first state to approve a law legalizing the cloning of embryos to produce stem cells for scientific and medical purposes. 2003: Dolly is euthanized in Scotland at age 6 after being diagnosed with lung disease. She had given birth to four lambs during her lifetime. 2004: Researchers at Seoul National University led by Hwang Woo Suk claim to be the first to clone a human embryo and generate cell lines from them. April 2005: The South Korean scientists clone a dog, who was named Snuppy. Dogs are considered particularly difficult to clone because of the complex reproductive biology. May 2005: Hwang's team announces the creation of 11 cloned embryonic stem cell lines. In the United Kingdom, a University of Newcastle upon Tyne team announces in the same month that it has also cloned a human embryo, but did not generate a stem cell line. December 2005: University investigators announce that Hwang's findings on human embryos and stem cells are fraudulent.

His team really did clone the dog. June 2006: Hwang's trial for fraud, embezzlement and bioethics breaches begins in Seoul District Court. Sources: Information Please Database, 2006 Pearson Education Inc, all rights reserved.; News @ Nature.com; USA TODAY, Feb. 14, 2004; CNN.com Dolly was world's hello to cloning's possibilities Posted 7/4/2006 7:45 PM ET E-mail | Print | By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, was born 10 years ago Wednesday, a birth met with elation by scientists who see cloning as a potential cure for illnesses and alarm by those who are fearful of a future populated by less-than-human clones. But Ian Wilmut, the scientist whose team at Scotland's Roslin Institute cloned Dolly — born July 5, 1996, and euthanized in 2003 because of lung disease — says the most interesting thing about the past decade is what has not happened.

Wilmut, who has been in North America speaking at scientific conferences and promoting his book After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Cloning, says scientists have not fully succeeded in cloning human embryos, and it could be decades before it happens. Though scientists have cloned 10 other mammals — cows, goats, pigs, rats, mice, rabbits, cats, dogs, horses and mules — Wilmut says there is a "striking absence of primates." The most accepted explanation is that the molecular machinery of primate eggs is prone to damage during cloning. If that is true, it could be a beacon for scientists, he says. "I see it as, if you like, almost an enlightening thing," he says. "It would indicate the problem that has to be solved." Before 1996, scientists created animal clones from embryonic cells, but Dolly was cloned using an adult cell, a difference that is key in the promise and much of the controversy of the technology. Wilmut's team implanted genetic material from an udder cell from one sheep into the hollowed-out egg of another, triggering cell division and implanting the resultant embryo into a surrogate-mother sheep.

Scientists hope one day to create an embryonic clone of a human patient, removing stem cells from that embryo to grow rejection-free transplant tissue. The destruction of the embryo to harvest those cells is strongly opposed by right-to-life advocates. Experts on both sides of the debate acknowledge the importance of Dolly's birth. It caught the scientific world by surprise, says Renee Reijo Pera, co-director of the University of California- San Francisco Human Embryonic Stem Cell Center and associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. "You can almost divide science into two segments: Before Dolly and After Dolly," she says. "We had a whole different way of thinking about things. We didn't think that cloning could be done at all." William Hurlbut, a professor at California's Stanford University and member of the President's Council on Bioethics who opposes cloning, says Dolly heralded an emerging technology that could have a "fundamental impact on human existence." The questions raised by cloning "get to the core of what it means to be a human being," and Dolly gave them a name, Hurlbut says. "The world community was faced with a scientific change that everybody could understand.

It wasn't highly technical; it had a face-to-face reality," he says. Wilmut agreed in December to become the director of the new Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His research group is applying for a license to clone human embryos from the United Kingdom's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority and hopes to begin work in January. But to his mind, the most interesting work has little to do with cloning and more to do with tinkering with the DNA machinery of cells. That includes efforts to genetically modify pigs so that their organs can be transplanted into humans without being rejected, potentially alleviating a severe shortage of human organs for transplant. Another is an attempt to create human antibodies in cattle that could be drawn out and used to treat such human ills as antibiotic-resistant infections, immune deficiencies and cancer. "There would be a huge potential benefit in having human antibodies; there's a great potential need for them in diagnostics," Wilmut says. The most important work may be efforts to change one cell into another type of cell without cloning. Philippe Collas, a researcher in Oslo, has done important work turning one type of cell into another without cloning, Wilmut says.

Collas has been able to make the membrane of cells porous, so by immersing cells in an extract of other cells, the proteins of the new cells enter the old ones and alter the way they function. Wilmut notes that each country is different in its views on how these new technologies should proceed. In the United Kingdom, research on the cloning of human embryos is regulated but allowed, while genetically modifying plants is considered a sensitive subject and rejected by most citizens. In the USA, the federal government does not support research involving cloning human embryos, but Americans eat genetically modified corn and soybeans. To Wilmut, the most important thing is that scientific progress not be stopped. People take for granted the enormous scientific strides of the past 50 years, including antibiotics, anesthetics, in vitro fertilization and organ transplants to name a few, he says. "People, particularly young people, seem to take for granted the treatments we have without realizing that many of them came from fairly dedicated long-term research. They underestimate the value of further research." And that, Wilmut believes, is perhaps the most dangerous scientific unknown of all.

Posted 7/4/2006 7:45 PM ET Biography, Dolly: Send in the Clones Dolly: Send in the Clones Rebecca Sweat When she was introduced to the world, her creators hailed it a major scientific breakthrough. She was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from the cell of an adult mammal, and an exact copy of a six-year-old ewe. Those of us who read of her birth were amazed, stunned, excited, and even a little unsettled. She is, of course, Dolly the sheep. Dolly was “born” July 5, 1996, and was introduced to the world in February 1997. She was cloned by a team of scientists at the Roslin Institute, a farm animal genetics institute near Edinburgh, Scotland. The ewe was named after American country music star Dolly Parton. Why attempt to clone a sheep? According to Harry Griffin, assistant director at the institute, he and his fellow scientists hope that the cloning technology used to produce Dolly will help them find improvements in conventional animal breeding and produce animals that can be used to find cures for human diseases.

For instance, sheep could be genetically altered to develop cystic fibrosis. Then, using cloning techniques, whole flocks of these altered sheep could be raised as laboratory animals. Researcher Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute cloned Dolly through a process called nuclear transplantation. Specifically, the Roslin scientists transferred nuclei from various types of sheep cells into unfertilized sheep eggs from which the natural nuclei had been removed by microsurgery. Once the transfer was complete, the recipient eggs contained a complete set of genes, just as they would if sperm had fertilized them. “The eggs were then cultured for a period before being implanted into sheep that carried them to term, one of which culminated in a successful birth,” Wilmut explains. The resulting lamb was, as expected, an exact genetic copy, or clone, of the sheep that provided the transferred nucleus, not the one that provided the egg. It took hundreds of attempts before Wilmut and his team were able to obtain a successful sheep clone. First they tried to get embryos to grow through the nuclear transfer technique. Of the 277 successful transfers, only 29 became embryos. And of these 29 embryos, Dolly was the sole survivor.

“Dolly is an absolutely normal animal,” says Alan Colman of PPL Therapeutics, the company that sponsored the research. “She behaves like a sheep and looks like a sheep. She is not a genetic mutant.” Griffin says the research team had previously cloned other mammals at various stages of development. What makes Dolly different, he says, is that she was cloned not from sex cells but from mature mammal cells with no reproductive function. “Dolly was cloned from adult cells which came from a sheep’s mammary gland, and while those cells contained a full genetic code, most of the genes have been switched off,” Griffin explains. “After all, the mammary gland doesn’t need genes for producing gastric acid or nerve cells to be active in the mammary gland.” Until Dolly’s creation, developmental biologists had thought that once a cell had developed into a particular type of cell, such as a mammary gland cell, skin cell or nerve cell, it remained that way forever—in effect, permanently switched off.

“The creation of a whole animal from a mammary gland cell demonstrated that this just wasn’t true,” Griffin notes, “and it put to rest the theory that once genes in cells are shut off, they can’t be switched back on again.” One concern with cloning Dolly from the DNA of a six-year-old ewe was the possibility that the DNA might have been too old or that it might cause Dolly to age rapidly or grow up in poor health. Griffin says that concern has proven to be unfounded. “As we get older, there are several changes that occur in our DNA; we tend to pick up mistakes as our DNA is replicated, and the ends of the chromosomes have protective caps which get eroded away with time,” he says. “Dolly has clearly inherited six years’ worth of erosion of the chromosomes from that six-year-old ewe, but there’s no evidence that she’s aging prematurely.” Griffin says they expect Dolly to live out a normal and full life, which for a sheep is about 11 or 12 years. Dolly has proven to be a healthy and fertile sheep. She had a whirlwind romance with a Welsh mountain ram, and nature took its course.

After mating the old-fashioned way, Dolly gave birth to a lamb named Bonnie in April 1998. In March 1999, she gave birth again, this time to three healthy lambs—two males and one female. Of Dolly’s offspring, only her firstborn has been fortunate enough to be named. “We declined to name the three born last year since we were running out of names and we were more concerned with limiting the number of celebrity sheep that we have in the Institute,” Griffin says. In March 1998, Dolly was fleeced, and her wool was made into a sweater. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust in the United Kingdom sponsored a competition to design a sweater that would be made from the cloned animal’s wool. The finished sweater, which depicts lots of happy sheep on both the front and the back, was donated to London’s Science Museum. Today Dolly lives with various farm animal companions, including other sheep, at the Roslin Institute. She is not the subject of any substantial experimental work, and at four years of age, she is semi-retired. “Dolly is more a media star than anything else,” Griffin says.

“We still get frequent requests from the media for interviews regarding Dolly, especially when other researchers claim a particular type of breakthrough regarding cloning. And so reporters will come to us, asking our perspective, since we were the ones who got the whole ball rolling.” Related Content cloning dolly the sheep Cloning Dolly the sheep Dolly the sheep, as the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, is by far the world's most famous clone. However, cloning has existed in nature since the dawn of life. From asexual bacteria to ‘virgin births’ in aphids , clones are all around us and are fundamentally no different to other organisms. A clone has the same DNA sequence as its parent and so they are genetically identical. Several clones had been produced in the lab before Dolly, including frogs , mice , and cows, which had all been cloned from the DNA from embryos. Dolly was remarkable in being the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. This was a major scientific achievement as it demonstrated that the DNA from adult cells, despite having specialised as one particular type of cell, can be used to create an entire organism. How Dolly was cloned Animal cloning from an adult cell is much more difficult than from an embryonic cell.

So when scientists working at the Roslin Institute in Scotland produced Dolly, the only lamb born from 277 attempts, it was a major news story around the world. To produce Dolly, scientists used an udder cell from a six-year-old Finn Dorset white sheep . They had to find a way to 'reprogram' the udder cells - to keep them alive but stop them growing – which they achieved by altering the growth medium (the ‘soup’ in which the cells were kept alive). Then they injected the cell into an unfertilised egg cell which had had its nucleus removed, and made the cells fuse by using electrical pulses. The unfertilised egg cell came from a Scottish Blackface ewe. When the research team had managed to fuse the nucleus from the adult white sheep cell with the egg cell from the black-faced sheep, they needed to make sure that the resulting cell would develop into an embryo. They cultured it for six or seven days to see if it divided and developed normally, before implanting it into a surrogate mother, another Scottish Blackface ewe. Dolly had a white face. From 277 cell fusions, 29 early embryos developed and were implanted into 13 surrogate mothers.

But only one pregnancy went to full term, and the 6.6 kg Finn Dorset lamb 6LLS (alias Dolly) was born after 148 days. What happened to Dolly? Dolly lived a pampered existence at the Roslin Institute. She mated and produced normal offspring in the normal way, showing that such cloned animals can reproduce. Born on 5 July 1996, she was euthanased on 14 February 2003, aged six and a half. Sheep can live to age 11 or 12, but Dolly suffered from arthritis in a hind leg joint and from sheep pulmonary adenomatosis, a virus-induced lung tumour that is common among sheep which are raised indoors. The DNA in the nucleus is wrapped up into chromosomes, which shorten each time the cell replicates. This meant that Dolly’s chromosomes were a little shorter than those of other sheep her age and her early ageing may reflect that she was raised from the nucleus of a 6-year old sheep.

Dolly was also not entirely identical to her genetic mother because the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell that are kept outside the nucleus, were inherited from Dolly’s egg donor mother. Why clone sheep? Dolly the sheep was produced at the Roslin Institute as part of research into producing medicines in the milk of farm animals. Researchers have managed to transfer human genes that produce useful proteins into sheep and cows, so that they can produce, for instance, the blood clotting agent factor IX to treat haemophilia or alpha-1-antitrypsin to treat cystic fibrosis and other lung conditions. Inserting these genes into animals is a difficult and laborious process; cloning allows researchers to only do this once and clone the resulting transgenic animal to build up a breeding stock. The development of cloning technology has led to new ways to produce medicines and is improving our understanding of development and genetics. Since Dolly Since 1996, when Dolly was born, other sheep have been cloned from adult cells, as have cats , rabbits , horses and donkeys, pigs, goats and cattle.

In 2004 a mouse was cloned using a nucleus from an olfactory neuron, showing that the donor nucleus can come from a tissue of the body that does not normally divide. Improvements in the technique have meant that the cloning of animals is becoming cheaper and more reliable. This has created a market for commercial services offering to clone pets or elite breeding livestock, but still with a $100,000 price-tag. The advances made through cloning animals have led to a potential new therapy to prevent mitochondrial diseases in humans being passed from mother to child. About 1 in 6000 people is born with faulty mitochondria, which can result in diseases like muscular dystrophy . To prevent this, genetic material from the embryo is extracted and placed in an egg cell donated by another woman, which contains functioning mitochondria. This is the same process as used in cloning of embryonic cells of animals. Without this intervention, the faulty mitochondria are certain to pass on to the next generation. The treatment is currently not permitted for use in humans. However, the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority in the UK has reported that there is general support in the public for legalising the therapy and making it available to patients.

Research field(s): Anatomy and development, Cell biology, Genetics, Medical technologies Medical application(s): Basic research First Mammal Clone Dies; Dolly Made Science History - The New York Times The New York Times World |First Mammal Clone Dies; Dolly Made Science History Search Dolly, the sheep who made history as the first clone from a mammal, died yesterday in Edinburgh. She was 6. She was put to death after developing a lung infection, her veterinarians said. On Friday afternoon, veterinarians who had been treating her at a veterinary school about two miles from the pen that was her home agreed that the infection was progressing and that she was suffering. They concluded that it would be more merciful to end her life than to continue treatment, Dr. Ian Wilmut, a scientist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh who led the team that created Dolly, said in a telephone interview. Her illness and death, Dr. Wilmut said, probably had nothing to do with the fact that she was a clone. ''It could equally well have happened if she was not a clone,'' he said. After a post-mortem examination, Dolly's remains will be given to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and put on display.

Continue reading the main story Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from cells of an adult. She was created by cloning the stored and frozen udder cells of a sheep that had been dead for years. As a clone, she is the identical twin of that long-dead, unknown and unnamed sheep. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Until Dolly, many had thought such a feat was biologically impossible. Her birth ''shattered theory in science,'' said Dr. Randall Prather, a cloning expert at the University of Missouri. It is not clear how long Dolly might have been expected to live because the natural life spans of sheep have not been well studied. ''Nine months and then we eat them,'' Dr. Wilmut said. He added that while it is possible for pastured sheep to live for 11 or 12 years, those who live indoors, as Dolly had, are prone to develop lung infections. Dolly was kept inside for security reasons. Dr. Wilmut said those who had watched Dolly grow were sad. ''The fact that she isn't there any more will be brought home to us when we go near that barn and she's not there,'' he said.

''She's been a friendly face of science,'' Dr. Wilmut said. ''She was a very friendly animal that was part of a big scientific breakthrough.'' He said he had no plans to clone Dolly. ''There are lots of reasons why we would be slightly curious,'' he said. ''But our priority has been to move along, to try to understand what happens during cloning, to try to make it more effective.'' Besides, he said, because genes interact with the environment, ''if we did clone her, it wouldn't be the same sheep.'' Dolly lived her entire life at the Roslin Institute where she was born on July 5, 1996. She entered the world head and forelegs first, weighing an unsurprising -- for a lamb -- 14.5 pounds. Because of the patent application on the cloning process that produced her, Dolly's birth was kept secret for months. Then, on Feb. 27, 1997, a paper titled, ''Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells'' appeared in the British journal Nature, and Dolly became a celebrity. Advertisement Continue reading the main story She also changed research priorities overnight.

''This experiment made people think very differently about biology,'' Dr. Wilmut said. ''It is one of the things that made people much more ambitious and optimistic'' about using stem cells as replacement cells for humans. The idea was to start the cloning process, then take the ball of cells after just a few days and extract embryonic stem cells. Those cells would then be used to generate tissues and organs that would match an individual's. But such research does not result in the birth of babies, or even the development of fetuses. Dolly also gave rise to fears that researchers would clone humans. Scientists caution that human cloning is far too dangerous to contemplate at this time, but several groups have announced that they are trying anyway. Cloning has turned out to be much riskier than anyone had predicted. Most attempts at cloning fail, and even animals that survive until birth have had serious, often fatal, problems with their lungs, their hearts or their immune systems. While scientists have cloned a variety of species, including mice, pigs, cattle and a cat, and have even cloned clones, the procedure remains difficult and unpredictable. Even when it has worked, there have been thousands of failures along the way. But for Dolly, life was good.

For her first 10 months, she shared a stall with two other sheep, but she would grab their food and she soon began growing fat. She would assert her authority by turning over her trough as soon as she finished eating and placing her forefeet on it, puffing out her chest and preening. Deciding that Dolly was not good at sharing, the Roslin staff finally put her in a stall by herself. While most sheep are shy around humans and huddle at the back of their pens when visitors arrive, Dolly loved attention. She rushed to the front of her stall when she saw people coming by, bleating loudly. Visitors always wanted to feed her, but the Roslin scientists explained that she had an obesity problem. Dolly did finally get her weight under control, Dr. Wilmut said, ''a lot more easily than most people do.'' Her health was generally good. Her main problem was arthritis in her left hip and knee, but University of Edinburgh veterinarians said joint disease is common in middle-aged sheep. Dolly is survived by six lambs, produced the customary way, with a ram.

Question: On July 5, 1996, scientists from the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, created Dolly, the first cloned mammal. What type of animal was she?
Answer: Sheep